then I learned to exercise horses. It seemed like everyone else was starving to death during the Great Depression. The racetrack was the only place you could make a dollar."
"They make riders much quicker now. At that time you had to exercise horses at least three years and then you had to ride a couple of races in front of the steward before he'd give you a license to ride. State law said you had to be sixteen and your folks had to sign, because it's a hazardous occupation."
"I was eager and started my apprenticeship when I turned sixteen in 1939. To lose your apprenticeship and be a full-fledged jockey, you had to ride forty winners. Most boys took a year to do it. One of my friends took two years. I lost my apprenticeship in just eight months! I rode forty winners in just eight months....that was pretty good."
"I started riding in Ohio, in the spring, and in December I got a contract to ride in Florida. That's where I made a name for myself and lost my apprenticeship."
"Ogden Phipps, a wealthy man who owned a great many horses, took me on contract the second year. It almost broke my heart, you see, I had been riding a big two year old, his name was Royal Man, a big chestnut horse. Gorgeous! In January he was classed as a three year old so they entered him in the Kentucky Derby and I was going to ride him!"
"Oh man, I couldn't sleep at night for months! The Kentucky Derby is all I thought about."
Royal Man was one of the favorites. We shipped him to Kentucky. He was working well, with no lameness. Then, about ten days before the Derby the trainer said, "Work him half a mile this morning, and put some air into him!” (That means letting him run for half a mile - working him out.) I didn't agree but you can't say anything to a trainer. That's his business."
"Well, Royal Man hit a bad spot on the track and came back saying 'how-do-you-do,' bobbing on three legs. One of the main bones in his foot was fractured."
"That was it. It was the only chance I ever had to ride in the Kentucky Derby. I moped around for months after that! Most jockeys don't ever get the chance to ride in the Derby."
I got up to poke the cubed potatoes with a fork. They were beginning to get tender. I turned off the flame and sat back down.
"Riding race horses isn't all a bed of roses," Norman explained earnestly, "there are bad things about it. Dangerous and all that...but what used to ruin my day was, sometimes horses go down under you and break a leg and have to be destroyed."
Carol flinched. Norman made an appeal to her, "That's racing for you. Some folks think it's cruel but thoroughbreds are bred to run. They have their usefulness. When one would have to be destroyed, it would ruin my day, and really bring me down. One of the older jockeys told me, 'you'll have to get over that!’ I never could."
Carol nodded understandingly and Norman slicked back his hair. "Racing isn't only hard on horses; it's hard on jockeys too! I've had every bone in my body broken. In a race, nine times out of ten, you won't get hurt when your horse goes down, but if you're anywhere out in front, it's the other horses running over you that do the damage. And they can't help it, they're all bunched up and they're running so fast - you haven't got a chance. That’s how most jockeys get killed. When you're down on the ground there's nothing bigger than a horse coming at you! Every time you go out there on the track you run the chance of not coming back. Maybe you'll get killed, or crippled. I accidentally killed one of my jockey friends. My horse is the one that stepped on him, it couldn't be helped."
Norman spit and then hurried on, "It's mighty hard to keep riding after something like that! You've got to keep the bad incidents out of your thoughts, for once it starts working on your mind, and you’ll lose your courage. Some jockeys start 'hitting the bottle' because of happenings like that, and it puts them on a downhill run. When you get so you have to have a bottle to build up your nerve, you'd better quit! But, like I said, riding race horses isn't all a bed of roses, nothing worthwhile ever is."
There was a pause, and while we sat with Norman quietly contemplating the death of his friend, the sun set over the Funeral Mountains and the whole sky took on the color of a rose. Small yellow alfalfa butterflies continued to rise and fall around the blue blossoms on the plants that give them their name, busily using every shred of daylight to gather nectar.
The ranch hands had gone home for the day, and the alfalfa fields around us were ready to cut. Beyond the fields, stretching as far as the eye could see was the creosote and sagebrush of The Amargosa Desert. It seemed as though the whole world was waiting silently for Norman's story to resume.
Norman broke the silence with a sigh and a comment on the beauty surrounding around us, "If I spend the rest of my life here," he said, "I'll die a happy man!” Then patting his flat stomach with both hands, he declared, "Most folks don't know that to ride race horses you must be physically fit at all times; like a prize-fighter. It's the most strenuous job! You use every muscle in your body to ride a race horse."
"A horse can carry more weight and run faster if you are over his withers. So, you are up in your stirrups, over his withers, and you're helping the horse by picking him up and putting him down. It's tiresome. After a month of vacation and then a race I'd be exhausted from just one race. Physically and mentally it is stressful - the best horses can sometimes lose."
I got up and used a pair of tongs to lift the hot cans out of the potato water. Norman watched me closely, "The last twenty years that I rode I was getting a weight problem," he confessed. "I had to diet and do the steam box for three hours at a time. It makes you weak. One time I lost eight pounds in three hours! On the days I had to sweat off the weight, then race, I'd be trembling when the race was over and staggering around on legs that felt like rubber. I'd hardly be able to unsaddle my horse!"
I drained the water off of the potatoes, using a tin plate as a lid, and then began to mash the potatoes with a fork. Norman spit.
"Now, I can eat anything I want!" he boasted. "I like growing my own vegetable garden. Oh, I love fresh vegetables!” Then, as though the thought of food and diets led to the thought of girls, he changed the subject abruptly.
"There were a number of girl jockeys, for a while, but they are backing off. They just can't take a fall like a man can. If girls had been riding when I started, I would have quit riding. I'd have let my wife ride, and I'd have kept house!"
"I got married when I was twenty-six. I was riding in Omaha, Nebraska and met her at the track. Pretty! She was beautiful! And, she could ride jumping horses, cutting horses and roping horses."
"Two Hollywood scouts wanted her, but, she didn't want any part of the movies. I've never known anyone with such a nice personality. My wife was a great horse-woman, and she was the only lady I have ever loved. Now, at my age even if I met a rich woman, I don't think I'd want any part of it!"
"I lost my wife young. My daughter was just a baby. My girl turned out to be a good girl, though. You know why? I couldn't drag her around from track to track with me, so I took her home to my mother. That's why she turned out good. My mother died three years ago, and my daughter is living in Colorado. She has two boys and a girl. All grown."
"When I get to Heaven I want to see my wife, my Mom and Dad and my Aunt Millie...then all the horses I rode, and the dogs I knew!"
The potatoes were pretty well mashed. I added a big dollop of real butter to them, stirred them a bit and then set them aside. Leaning back in his chair, Norman called his small German shepherd back to him from where she had wandered off toward the burros. He patted her head as she laid it fondly on his knee. "Her name is Rin Tin Tin Number 13," he explained. "Someone dumped her here about three months ago. What kind of person would do that to a young, helpless animal?"
"I'd
